


Totally Awesome

by Strigoi17



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: F/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 19:39:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/930302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strigoi17/pseuds/Strigoi17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The house is warm and oaky-smelling; the floorboards creak as you walk across them. The windows are dingy and the light pooling through them is dim. Dust coats the floors and the walls, washing everything in a blurry grey. You wonder how long Stan had been in the hospital -- or if he was honestly that incapable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Totally Awesome

There was an old Chinese myth prophesying that when a pair of star-crossed lovers die together, they would be reborn as twins.

Specifically, it was the legend about the Jade Emperor and his angels. Two immortal servants fell in love under the pristine overhang of heaven, and in the process became too involved in each other; distracted from their jobs by their insistent love. The Emperor, enraged, separated the two of them, banishing them to opposite ends of space’s immensity.

Once a year, their love would manifest in a flock of crows, molding into a bridge of stars that would stretch across the galaxy and meet at each of their feet. The two lovers would walk across the newly-created Milky Way and embrace for their reunion, short as a hairbreadth, before being separated once again.

One year, their crows never came. Antsy and impatient, the boy flew across the entire galaxy to find his wife, and upon doing so came upon the Emperor. Newly furious at the man’s disobedience, he sentenced the two lovers to immediate death, where they were executed side-by-side. Years later, a pair of twins was born to a wealthy mother and father.

When he was younger, Dipper found himself reading and rereading an old astrology book his mother had gotten him at a garage sale. The pages were stained and timeworn, yellow at the corners and brown at the seams. In the very, very back of the book, the story of the star-crossed lovers was nearly falling out of the book.

As he matured, Dipper fell out of the hobby, but every so often the story would ring in the back of his mind, calling attention back to the myth. It was one of those things he couldn’t shake, like an embarrassing memory or pieces of a conversation you had as a child.

 

The car was hot and the road was long. Your seat belt was digging into your chest, the air conditioning shut off fifty miles back, and Mabel wouldn’t let you drive.

“I passed my drivers test.” You remind her, fanning yourself with the bill of your hat.

“Yeah,” she snorts, rolling up the window, “after the fourth time.”

“I still passed it.”

“I still wanna drive. You can drive back.”

You sink into your seat, kicking your feet up onto the dashboard. Mabel was anxious. “I don’t think he’s actually hurt.”

“Yeah. Maybe not.” Her hands are tight on the steering wheel and her eyebrows are knit together. She’s chewing her lip again, a bad habit she developed just after she got her braces off, and you try to distract her.

“It’s Stan.” You snort. “Do you really believe he’d do what they said?”

“They’re doctors.” Mabel retorts, glancing sideways at her brother. “And he is… kinda old.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like he’s a dinosaur.” He’s totally a dinosaur, Dipper, don’t be an idiot. “He was probably drunk.”

This earns a giggle, and as you slap your hat back on your head, you smiles. The car ride had been torturously quiet, and the sound is like spun sugar.

“Did he even drink?” She asks. “I don’t remember.”

“I’m sure he did.” You bent between your legs, grabbed the weather-worn map out of the console. “Probably just not around us. But it’s Stan.”

“I dunno man.” She peers over at the map in your hands, all wide brown eyes. “He was pretty dumb with all of the stunts he pulled.”

You yank it out of her eyesight. “Eyes on the road. But yeah, remember that one time when he tried to give us the sex talk? How bad was THAT?”

Mabel laughs so hard she nearly swerves off the road. She gives a toothy smile, one that raises her eyebrows up her forehead and has you wriggling in your seat with laughter. “Oh-oh my god! Do you remember when he filled your backpack with condoms?”

“Holy SHIT. Do you remember when Wendy found them?”

Her hand slaps down onto the steering wheel and she reels back, consumed momentarily by laughter. It’s a mix of giggles and snorts, and it takes her a minute to calm down enough to force out a coherent sentence. You hope she can see the road through her squinty eyes, but you can’t focus much past how red her cheeks have gotten. “Dude, they just flew out of your bag, ohmygod it was like a condom volcano—”

“SHUT UP OH MY GOD.” You whap the side of her head with the map, and she dissolves into twittering laughter again. A few strands of hair come untucked from her headband and you lean forward to tuck them back, threading your hands through the wind-swept hair.

You both sober up immediately once the police sirens echo up the road after you.

Mabel pulls over immediately, yanking the car up to the shoulder with shaky hands and wide eyes. Once it stutters to a halt, you glance to her, and there’s a look of shared fear between the two of you. You hadn’t even gotten to the shack yet, and you were already getting pulled over?

In the ten goddamn minutes it takes the officer to walk up to your car, you’ve put on your seatbelt and finished fixing her hair. She still looks disheveled, face pale and eyes bulging, and you keep petting her head until the cop comes around to her already rolled-down window. You were equipped to fight any array of supernatural beings, but cops weren’t your forte.

“Well well!” The voice is familiar, and after some discreet squinting, so is the face. “If it isn’t the Mystery Twins.”

“Deputy Durland!” Mabel cries, relieved. He’s full of frown lines and his eyes are ringed with deep purple bags; you wonder what’s happened to him to make him look so bitter.

“Sheriff Durland,” he corrects, taking off his sunglasses. “License and registration.”

Mabel hands over the papers with shaking hands; your hand falls to her shoulder, and Sheriff Durland’s eyes follow it.

“Where’s Sheriff Blubs?” Mabel asks, genuinely curious.

He glances over her license once, twice, before handing them back. “Step out of the car.”

“Is everything okay?” She’s frozen in her seat, hands clasped in her lap.

“Step out of the car.” His voice is low and testy. Mabel catches the message and opens the door, sidling out of her seat. You follow instinctively, standing and almost jogging around the hood of the car to stand by her side.

“Get back in the car,” Sheriff durland says to you. For a moment you stare, confused and speechless, before he continues. “I’m talking to your sister, Dipper. Get back in the car.”

There’s an instance of unmistakable tension; your eyebrows knit together and you stuff your hands into your pockets. You debate staring him down for a very, very long second, before stepping back around the car. The door slams shut of its own accord, and you feel suffocated and helpless in the passenger seat.

He makes her take a sobriety test. A legitimate “walk on this line, count your ABCs backwards” sobriety test. You see her cringe when she wraps her lips around the breathalyzer and a fire of foreign anger starts in your chest.

Nearly half an hour through, you’re shaking, too. You’re wondering why, exactly, he’s making her go through all of this, when it was obvious that she hadn’t drank. You yank your hat farther and farther down your forehead, sink deeper into your seat.

Eventually, he sighs. You think maybe you’re being paranoid, because when he says “I guess you’re clean,” he sounds disappointed. Of course, in the past — especially in this town — your paranoia has almost always paid off.

“Are you okay?” You ask when Sheriff Durland has left and you’re creeping down the road. Mabel was now going at least twenty miles below the speed limit, and she’s shaking so much you’re surprised she isn’t swerving again.

“I’m fine.” Her voice is small and brittle.

You know she won’t talk, so you skip back to the conversation you were having before. Your thoughts are frazzled, sprinting in circles and colliding with each other. You speak impulsively. “I wonder what even happened to Wendy.”

“We should look her up, after we go visit Grunkle Stan.”

There’s a pensiveness to her voice; you leave it be, nodding and settling into a worried silence.

 

The shack is almost falling apart at the seams. Half of the sign has fallen off by now, and instead of reattaching them, it looks like Stan just repainted where the letters were. The lawn is overrun with weeds, and there’s an awkward air of vacancy sitting stiffly on the whole property. In their young summers, there was always movement, whether it was customers or the two of them investigating — but now, even the forest seems empty.

“It’s kind of spooky.” Says Mabel, who had calmed down slightly in the fifteen-minute ride back to the Mystery Shack.

“Really spooky,” you correct, opening your door but stopping before you step out. The sudden smell of familiarity is overwhelming, and you need a moment to collect yourself.

Mabel sniffs the air outright, standing and slamming the door shut behind her. “Eugh! I can still kinda smell the gnomes.”

“All I smell is pine cones and dirt.” You circle around to the back, pop the trunk. You’ve brought at least a summer’s worth of clothes, four suitcases and three bookbags between the two of you. You sling all three bags over your shoulder, and manage to lug out one of your suitcases before Mabel can grab the other three. She somehow manages to drag all of them out at once, and you snatch one of them in your free hand.

“I got it,” You assure her, hauling the suitcases up to the front door. They’re heavier than you first expected, and crossing the yard is proving to be a challenge. Once you actually reach the steps you’re wheezing. Mabel gives you a playful shove, pushing you out of the way as she fishes in her pocket in search of the keys. You nearly tumble down the steps.

The house is warm and oaky-smelling; the floorboards creak as you walk across them. The windows are dingy and the light pooling through them is dim. Dust coats the floors and the walls, washing everything in a blurry grey. You wonder how long Stan had been in the hospital — or if he was honestly that incapable.

“Chinese or pizza?” She asks, setting the suitcases down by the staircase. Backlit by stone and the cloudy sunset, she looks like she’s stepped out of a fuzzy memory. There’s a sad nostalgia swimming in your stomach; you turn away, kneading at your forehead. Over time, the gradual changes hadn’t struck you, but now there’s a surprise, a sudden realization on how long her legs have gotten and how dark her eyes are. She’s wearing an oversized sweater like a dress, and you notice for the first time how her thighs curve together, how the silhouette of her hips shadows through the heavy knit.

“Let’s go see Grunkle Stan first. Then we can go to the diner.”


End file.
